Listening to the Ted Turner News Network, I thought I heard that congress wanted to legitimize the use of torture

If it passes, the people on GW's "Enemies List" will have more to fear than the IRS.
Bush Declares: 'We Do Not Torture'

PANAMA CITY, Panama (AP) - President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful. ``We do not torture,'' Bush declared in response to reports of secret CIA prisons overseas.

Bush supported an effort spearheaded by Vice President Dick Cheney to block or modify a proposed Senate-passed ban on torture.

``We're working with Congress to make sure that as we go forward, we make it possible, more possible, to do our job,'' Bush said. ``There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. And so, you bet we will aggressively pursue them. But we will do so under the law.''

Cheney is seeking to persuade Congress to exempt the Central Intelligence Agency from the proposed torture ban if one is passed by both chambers.

Bush spoke at a news conference with Panamanian President Martin Torrijos on the same day the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider a challenge to the administration's military tribunals for foreign terror suspects.

In a case entailing a major test of the government's wartime powers, justices will decide whether Osama bin Laden's former driver can be tried for war crimes before military officers in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, U.S. military forces have held hundreds of suspects at known installations outside the United States, including at the Guantanamo Bay naval base.

On Monday, the Pentagon announced that five additional terror suspects at Guantanamo will face military trials on various charges including attacking civilians and murder. That brought to nine out of about 500 detainees at the facility who have been charged with criminal offenses.

Bush was asked about reports that the CIA was separately maintaining secret prisons in eastern Europe and Asia to interrogate al-Qaida suspects - and demands by the International Red Cross for access to them.

Without confirming or denying the existence of such prisons, Bush said, ``Our country is at war, and our government has the obligation to protect the American people.''

He pointedly noted that Congress shares that responsibility with the administration.

``We are finding terrorists and bringing them to justice. We are gathering information about where the terrorists may be hiding. We are trying to disrupt their plots and plans. Anything we do ... to that end in this effort, any activity we conduct, is within the law. We do not torture,'' Bush said.

The European Union is investigating reports of the CIA prisons. The story was first reported by The Washington Post.

In Washington, Senate Democrats pressed for the creation of an independent commission to investigate detainee abuse. They hope to attach the proposal to a defense bill the Senate is considering this week.

``We need a 9/11-type commission to restore credibility to this nation,'' said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., called the commission unnecessary. ``Responsibility and accountability have been assessed,'' Warner said, echoing Pentagon arguments that it had already done a dozen major investigations into prisoner-abuse allegations.

But Levin said there are areas that have not been reviewed, such as the CIA's interrogation of prisoners, the exporting of prisoners to countries that engage in torture, and the role contractors play in interrogations.

Separately, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., said Bush's comments in Panama, combined with Cheney's efforts to exempt the CIA from the torture ban, ``only demonstrate that the White House learned nothing from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.''

so if ronnie reagan gave you a gun to protect yourself with would you go out killing people just because of their religion or because you didn't like them ,with it or would you use it for self defense?

_________________I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live in freedom. George W. BushDESTROY THE QURAN OR BE DESTROYED BY IT

so if ronnie reagan gave you a gun to protect yourself with would you go out killing people just because of their religion or because you didn't like them ,with it or would you use it for self defense?

Bucky, would you give a gun to a murderer and then act all shocked and indignant when he used it to murder someone?

Oh yes, you probably would, wouln't you, being as you are a Republican.

Last edited by shoeless on Fri Nov 18, 2005 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Bucky you sure are blinded by the light and not the light of God. You are what I refer to as a Blind Patriot a Nationalist. Do you know what the German word is for Nationalist? Here let me give you a hint, Bucky Boy.

'Cheney is vice president for torture'
11.35PM, Thu Nov 17 2005

A former CIA director has exclusively told ITV News that torture is condoned and even approved by the Bush government.

The devastating accusations have been made by Admiral Stansfield Turner who labelled Dick Cheney "a vice president for torture".

He said: "We have crossed the line into dangerous territory".

The American Senate says torture should be banned - whatever the justification. But President Bush has threatened to veto their ruling.

The former spymaster claims President Bush is not telling the truth when he says that torture is not a method used by the US.

Speaking of Bush's claims that the US does not use torture, Admiral Turner, who ran the CIA from 1977 to 1981, said: "I do not believe him".

On Dick Cheney he said "I'm embarrassed the United States has a vice president for torture.

"He condones torture, what else is he?".

Admiral Turner claims the secret CIA prisons used for torture are known as 'black sites', terror suspects are picked up in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

They are flown by CIA-controlled private aircraft to countries where there are secret interrogation centres, operating outside any country's jurisdiction.

No one will confirm their locations, but there are several possibilities: The Mihail-Kogalniceanu military airbase in Romania is believed by many to be one such facility.

Admiral Turner's remarks were echoed by Republican Senator John McCain, himself a victim of torture in Vietnam.

He said torturing to get information was immoral, was not effective and encouraged potential enemies to do the same to Americans.

Both Mr Bush and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice have repeatedly stated that torture by US forces is not condoned.
Mar 8: Foreign torture claim levelled at US government
Jun 23, 2004: Bush rejects Guantanamo torture claims

Bush and Condi have been going around telling everyone that the US does not torture and does not send prisioners to other countries to be tortured. Here is the story of their main soucre of information connecting Iraq to al Qaeda. They moved him to Egypt, tortured him, and he made up the whole story in order to stop the torture.

This is just one of the many reasons to not torture people. They will say anything to make it stop.

By Douglas Jehl
New York Times News Service
Published December 9, 2005

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.

The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002 in a process known as rendition.

The new disclosure provides the first public evidence that bad intelligence on Iraq may have come partly from the administration's heavy reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations. The Bush administration used al-Libi's accounts as the basis for its prewar claims, now discredited, that ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda included training in explosives and chemical weapons.

The fact that al-Libi recanted after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and that intelligence based on his remarks was withdrawn by the CIA in March 2004 has been public for more than a year. But U.S. officials had not previously acknowledged either that al-Libi made the false statements in foreign custody or that al-Libi contended that his statements had been coerced.

A government official said that some intelligence provided by al-Libi about Al Qaeda had been accurate and that al-Libi's statements that he had been treated harshly in Egyptian custody had not been corroborated.

A classified Defense Intelligence Agency report issued in February 2002 that expressed skepticism about al-Libi's credibility on Iraq and Al Qaeda was based in part on the knowledge that al-Libi was no longer in U.S. custody when he made the detailed statements and that he might have been treated harshly, the officials said.

The officials said the CIA's decision to withdraw the intelligence based on al-Libi's claims had been made because of his later assertions, beginning in January 2004, that he had fabricated them to obtain better treatment from his captors.

At the time of his capture in Pakistan in late 2001, al-Libi, a Libyan, was the highest-ranking Al Qaeda leader in U.S. custody. Though he made some statements about Iraq and Al Qaeda when in U.S. custody, the officials said, it was not until after he was handed over to Egypt that he made the most specific assertions.

Dec 15: NBC's David Gregory talks about President Bush reversing course and accepting Sen. John McCain's call for a law banning torture with anchor Campbell Brown.

Dec. 15: Colin Powell says there must be strict rules for the military and the CIA with a law banning torture. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
Nightly News

Updated: 9:39 p.m. ET Dec. 15, 2005
WASHINGTON - President Bush reversed course on Thursday and accepted Sen. John McCain’s call for a law banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of foreign suspects in the war on terror.

Bush said the agreement will “make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad.”

“It’s a done deal,” said McCain, talking to reporters outside the White House.

Under the deal, CIA interrogators would be given the same legal rights as currently guaranteed members of the military who are accused of breaking interrogation guidelines. Those rules say the accused can defend themselves by arguing it was reasonable for them to believe they were obeying a legal order.

“We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists,” McCain said earlier as he sat next to Bush in the Oval Office. “We have no grief for them, but what we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are. And I think this will help us enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror.”

An appeal from Cheney
The White House at one point threatened a veto if the ban was included in legislation sent to the president’s desk, and Vice President Dick Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to all Republican senators to give an exemption to the CIA.

But congressional sentiment was overwhelmingly in favor of the ban, and McCain, a former Navy pilot who was held and tortured for five and a half years in Vietnam, adopted the issue.

He said he would try preventing the measure from reaching a House vote unless he got White House assurances that the new rules would still allow “the same high level of effective intelligence gathering” as under current procedures.

But Sen. John Warner, R-Va., Hunter’s counterpart in the Senate, was on board and appeared with Bush and McCain in the Oval Office. “We’re going to get there,” Warner said afterward. Officials said the ban would remain intact in the other bill, the final defense spending measure.

The Republican maverick and the administration have been negotiating for weeks in search of a compromise, but it became increasingly clear that he, not the administration, had the votes in Congress.

Bush called McCain “a good man who’s honored the values of America.”

“We have worked very closely with the senator and others to achieve that objective as well as to provide protections for those who are the front line of fighting the terrorists,” Bush said.

As passed by the Senate and endorsed by the House, McCain’s amendment would prohibit “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held. It also would require that service members follow procedures in the Army Field Manual during interrogations of prisoners in Defense Department facilities.

In discussions with the White House, that language was altered to bring it into conformity with the Uniform Code of Military Justice. That says that anyone accused of violating interrogation rules can defend themselves if a “reasonable” person could have concluded they were following a lawful order.

No immunity
Officials say the language also now includes a specific statement that those who violate the standards will not be afforded immunity from civil or criminal lawsuits.

In recent weeks, the administration had sought to add language that would offer protection from prosecution for interrogators accused of violating the provision. But McCain rejected that, arguing it would undermine the ban by not giving interrogators reason to follow the law.

Earlier this year, the Senate included McCain’s original provisions in two defense bills, including a must-pass $453 billion spending bill that provides $50 billion for the Iraq war. But the House omitted them from their versions, and the bills have been stalled.

Negotiations intensified this week, with Congress under pressure to approve at least the spending bill before adjourning for the year.

Supporters of the provisions say they are needed to clarify current anti-torture laws in light of abuses at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and allegations of misconduct by U.S. troops at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

They also say that passing such legislation will help the United States repair an image they say has been tarnished by the prisoner abuse scandal.

“The fog of law is finally lifting. America’s moral black eye is finally healing,” Rep. Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

The White House long has contended that the United States does not engage in torture.

NBC News contributed to this report

WOW BUSH agrees to ban something that he said doesn't happen. Now I believe in Santa Claus,and the Easter Bunny.

Army Officer Found Guilty in Iraqi's Death
By JON SARCHE, Associated Press Writer

FORT CARSON, Colo. - An Army interrogator committed negligent homicide when he put a sleeping bag over an Iraqi general's head and sat on his chest as the man suffocated, a military jury found.

Attorneys for Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr. said he believed the general had information that would "break the back of the whole insurgency" at a time when soldiers were being killed in an increasingly lethal and bold resistance.

But prosecutor Maj. Tiernan Dolan maintained that Welshofer tortured Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush at a detention camp in 2003, treating him "worse than you would treat a dog."

After six hours of deliberations, the panel of six Army officers spared Welshofer on the more serious charge of murder — which carries a potential life sentence — instead convicting him late Saturday of negligent homicide and negligent dereliction of duty. He was acquitted of assault.

Welshofer stood silently and showed no reaction when the verdict was announced. He could be dishonorably discharged and sentenced to a maximum three years and three months in prison at a Monday hearing.

Defense attorney Frank Spinner said he would decide after sentencing whether to appeal.

"The verdict recognizes the context in which these events took place," he said. "It was a very difficult time in Iraq. There was confusion, and they were not getting clear guidance from headquarters."

Welshofer and prosecutors left without commenting.

During the trial, prosecutors described a rogue interrogator who became frustrated with Mowhoush's refusal to answer questions and escalated his techniques from simple interviews to beatings to simulating drowning, and finally, to death.

Welshofer used his sleeping bag technique in the presence of lower ranking soldiers, but never in the presence of officers with the authority to stop him, Dolan said.

The treatment of the Iraqi general "could fairly be described as torture," Dolan said.

In an e-mail to a commander, Dolan said, Welshofer wrote that restrictions on interrogation techniques were impeding the Army's ability to gather intelligence. Welshofer wrote that authorized techniques came from Cold War-era doctrine that did not apply in Iraq, Dolan said.

"Our enemy understands force, not psychological mind games," Dolan quoted from Welshofer's message. Dolan said an officer responded by telling Welshofer to "take a deep breath and remember who we are."

The defense had argued a heart condition caused Mowhoush's death, and that Welshofer's commanders had approved the interrogation technique.
"What he was doing he was doing in the open, and he was doing it because he believed the information in fact would save lives," Spinner said.He asked jurors to consider deadly conditions in Iraq at the time of the interrogation. Welshofer had to make some decisions on his own because guidance was lacking and other techniques weren't working, Spinner said.

Officials believed Mowhoush had information that would "break the back of the whole insurgency," said defense attorney Capt. Ryan Rosauer. They also thought Mowhoush helping to bring foreign fighters into Iraq from across the Syrian border, he said.

Several prosecution witnesses, including one whose identity is classified and who testified in a closed session, had been granted immunity in exchange for their cooperation, Spinner noted. Two soldiers who were initially charged with murder in the case also were given immunity.

It was torture but not bad torture because it was done in the open?That is the arrogant attitude that will bring the downfall of the US Imerialist Aggressors in Iraq, just like it did in Vietnam

STRASBOURG, France (AP) - The head of a European investigation into alleged CIA secret prisons in Europe said Tuesday there was evidence the United States outsourced torture to other countries and it was likely European governments knew about it.

But Swiss senator Dick Marty said there was no formal evidence so far of the existence of clandestine detention centers in Romania or Poland as alleged by the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

``There is a great deal of coherent, convergent evidence pointing to the existence of a system of 'relocation' or 'outsourcing' of torture,'' Marty said in a report presented to the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog investigating the alleged secret prisons.

The report said more than 100 terror suspects may have been transferred to countries where they faced torture or ill treatment in recent years.

Europe 'Knew About' CIA Flights [BBC News]

CIA Prisons Moved To North Africa? [CBS News]

Full Text: Rice Defends U.S. Policy [BBC News]

Straw: No Flights Via Britain Since 911 [Netscape News]

Is America Really Arguing About Torture? [CNN]

Bush Tried To Stifle Our Right To Know [Netscape Community]

Report: CIA Detainees Hastily Relocated to Morocco [Blog: Effwit]

``It is highly unlikely that European governments, or at least their intelligence services, were unaware,'' Marty said in the report.

The Council of Europe launched its probe after allegations surfaced in November that U.S. agents interrogated key al-Qaida suspects at clandestine prisons in eastern Europe and transported some suspects to other countries passing through Europe.

Human Rights Watch identified Romania and Poland as possible sites of secret U.S.-run detention facilities. Both countries have denied involvement, and Marty's report said there was no formal, irrefutable evidence of secret CIA prisons in either country, or anywhere else in Europe.

``On the other hand, it has been proved that individuals have been abducted, deprived of their liberty and all rights and transported to different destinations in Europe to be handed over to countries in which they have suffered degrading treatment and torture,'' the report said.

In the report, Marty analyzed the cases of an Egyptian cleric allegedly kidnapped in Italy and sent back to Egypt and a German captured in Macedonia and taken to Afghanistan.

Last week, Italy's justice minister formally asked the United States to allow Italian prosecutors to question 22 purported CIA operatives they accuse of kidnapping the Egyptian cleric, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, in 2003 from a Milan street.

Prosecutors say Nasr, believed to belong to an Islamic terror group, was taken by the CIA to a joint U.S.-Italian air base, flown to Germany and then to Egypt, where he claims he was tortured.

Khaled al-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, is suing the CIA for wrongful imprisonment and torture, saying he was seized in Macedonia on Dec. 31, 2003, and taken by CIA agents to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly abused before being released in Albania in May 2004.

Citing an American lawyer, Marty also said six Bosnians were abducted by American agents on Bosnian soil and taken to the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite a Bosnian judgment ordering their release.

OUTSOURCED- this is such a lovely Neo-Con term isn't it.Maybe it should be USA awarded Torture contracts to lowest bidder.Or, Americans laid -off as Army outsources it torture work to 3rd world countries.

The U.S. Army in Iraq has at least twice seized and jailed the wives of suspected insurgents in hopes of ``leveraging'' their husbands into surrender, U.S. military documents show.

Saturday, Jan. 28

In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him ``to come get his wife.''

The issue of female detentions in Iraq has taken on a higher profile since kidnappers seized American journalist Jill Carroll on Jan. 7 and threatened to kill her unless all Iraqi women detainees are freed.

The U.S. military on Thursday freed five of what it said were 11 women among the 14,000 detainees currently held in the 2 1/2-year-old insurgency. All were accused of ``aiding terrorists or planting explosives,'' but an Iraqi government commission found that evidence was lacking.

Iraqi human rights activist Hind al-Salehi contends that U.S. anti-insurgent units, coming up empty-handed in raids on suspects' houses, have at times detained wives to pressure men into turning themselves in.

Iraq's deputy justice minister, Busho Ibrahim Ali, dismissed such claims, saying hostage-holding was a tactic used under the ousted Saddam Hussein dictatorship, and ``we are not Saddam.'' A U.S. command spokesman in Baghdad, Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, said only Iraqis who pose an ``imperative threat'' are held in long-term U.S.-run detention facilities.

But documents describing two 2004 episodes tell a different story as far as short-term detentions by local U.S. units. The documents are among hundreds the Pentagon has released periodically under U.S. court order to meet an American Civil Liberties Union request for information on detention practices.

In one memo, a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer described what happened when he took part in a raid on an Iraqi suspect's house in Tarmiya, northwest of Baghdad, on May 9, 2004. The raid involved Task Force (TF) 6-26, a secretive military unit formed to handle high-profile targets.

``During the pre-operation brief it was recommended by TF personnel that if the wife were present, she be detained and held in order to leverage the primary target's surrender,'' wrote the 14-year veteran officer.

He said he objected, but when they raided the house the team leader, a senior sergeant, seized her anyway.

``The 28-year-old woman had three young children at the house, one being as young as six months and still nursing,'' the intelligence officer wrote. She was held for two days and was released after he complained, he said.

Like most names in the released documents, the officer's signature is blacked out on this for-the-record memorandum about his complaint.

Of this case, command spokesman Johnson said he could not judge, months later, the factors that led to the woman's detention.

The second episode, in June 2004, is found in sketchy detail in e-mail exchanges among six U.S. Army colonels, discussing an undisclosed number of female detainees held in northern Iraq by the Stryker Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division.

The first message, from a military police colonel, advised staff officers of the U.S. northern command that the Iraqi police would not take control of the jailed women without charges being brought against them.

In a second e-mail, a command staff officer asked an officer of the unit holding the women, ``What are you guys doing to try to get the husband - have you tacked a note on the door and challenged him to come get his wife?''

Two days later, the brigade's deputy commander advised the higher command, ``As each day goes by, I get more input that these gals have some info and/or will result in getting the husband.''

He went on, ``These ladies fought back extremely hard during the original detention. They have shown indications of deceit and misinformation.''

The command staff colonel wrote in reply, referring to a commanding general, ``CG wants the husband.''

The released e-mails stop there, and the women's eventual status could not be immediately determined.

Of this episode, Johnson said, ``It is clear the unit believed the females detained had substantial knowledge of insurgent activity and warranted being held.''